


Human, All Too Human (The Importance of Being Black)

by vogue91



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 20:25:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13748613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vogue91/pseuds/vogue91
Summary: Being a Black is a cross. Some wears it, some bears it.





	Human, All Too Human (The Importance of Being Black)

_ By dint of being wind _

There was nothing those walls spared to him. Not a memory, not an insult. They didn’t spare him the sleepless nights, spent trying to look for an escape, as if it was a glass prison, terrible, where he could see an unreachable outside. And they didn’t spare him the continuous screams.

He looked at the pictures hanging on the walls, as if they could act as a bridge to his world. He looked as James’ open smile, Remus’ deep eyes, and the slightly gaunt gaze of Peter, and told himself that those faces were his home, not in that place in that time, where no one ever missed to hurt his pride, his soul.

He had been lying for years, now. He lied to himself, he lied to his friends, pretending to have found a peace that he had actually never met, that would take him away to the words hissed at him everytime he walked past the door.

_Traitor. Scum. Mugglephile._

He had heard so many times his mother telling him that he wasn’t her son that he just wished it to be true, and so find himself in another home, with a family worthy of being called that.

But it never happened, and every morning, opening his eyes after scarce hours of sleep, he was still in that elegant bed, still in that grim house, an house reeking of hatred and arrogance.

He dreamt all that was normal for a sixteen-years-old boy to dream.

He dreamt of having the world at his feet, to make his wishes come true with a snap of his fingers, to travel, to visit lands he had only heard of…

The only atypical desire, the thing no one should’ve ever being put in a condition to lack, was freedom.

That freedom that he had seen erased in years, denied to him too many times.

The freedom to be Sirius and nothing else, to unbind from his last name and living the rest of his days without feeling on him the weight of other people’s expectations, without being pointed as _wrong_ from the very same people who had brought him into the world.

He got nothing left to hope, if not that the torture he was submitted to daily would stop soon. He wished he was blind, deaf and mute, so that he couldn’t see the disappointment and despise on his relatives’ faces, that he couldn’t hear their words of condemnation, that he couldn’t answer, attracting more and more hatred on himself.

He was a wandered in a foreign land, a Griffin in a nest of Snakes.

He stood up slowly, opening the window. A freezing wind of December whipped his face, almost hurting, but calming down in Sirius that anxiety for running, which weighed on him like a stone on his chest.

To the wind flew his parents’ words, now whispered, but all the same. The wind took away the prejudices, it took away a bit of the darkness surrounding him. He hurt his hand against the corner of the window and smiled, because the wind took with itself also a little of that pure blood, which nauseated him.

For a moment he felt the need to tear off his own skin, to undress of his being and remain just essence. Then he sat back down, laughing of himself and the madness eating him when he was forced by invisible chains to remain in that house.

He laid back on the bed, a dormant tiredness taking over him, and waited to fall asleep, to finally give room to the dreams, like ice on a wound, capable of relieve any pain.

He dreamt of losing himself in that wind, being rocked by its breezes to a place where no one had ever heard of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

He dreamt he could actually be the person he showed to the others, that carefree and smiling boy, even a little shallow.

He dreamt, for in that moment it was the only thing making him feel _alive,_ making him feel safe.

After all, men have always sook refuge in dreams, and in them they find the quiet that in reality is denied, almost devastated.

A smile wrinkled his face, and he drowned in that sea of hope.

 

_ Perhaps I’ve confused pleasure and love _

Lying on a cold bed, she studied her image to the mirror.

She was beautiful. She was sensual. She was all a man could ever desire.

And yet that body seemed sculpted in marble, that face, which looked like the dark side of the Moon, didn’t hide anything inside of it. There was a burning emptiness inside of her, an emptiness that until a few years back she had deemed unbridgeable.

Until she had been seduced by shadows. Until her eyes, cold as usual, hadn’t met something far more freezing.

The name of her Lord wandered her mind undisturbed, tormenting her, raising emotions that she had thought long tamed.

When she was alone in bed, like in that moment, she closed her eyes and could almost _feel_ Voldemort’s thin fingers brushing her, master of her skin, master of her lips, master of anything he wanted from her.

And also of what he didn’t. Master of her heart.

She had wondered many times the reason behind those sensations, and she had come up with a disarming realisation. She loved him. And not like a slave loves his master... she loved him in an annihilating way, like the Earth loves the Sun.

And he had taken her, like she was an object, but the best one he owned. He loved her as well, Bella knew it.

He loved her violently and he loved her body, nothing else.

There were nights when the witch _hated_ him. At times she would’ve wanted to slap him one single time, just to make him feel the burn of hurt dignity, as he did to her every night. He always took away a part of her, and Bellatrix was aware that she was soon going to become ashes, that she would’ve become a memory and nothing more.

She fisted the sheets. She should’ve never allowed something like that to happen. She was born to lead, not to be subdued. And yet night after night she kept wearing the yoke of her feelings, a constraint that she would’ve gladly gotten rid of, if only her mind would’ve allowed her to stand to be apart from the Dark Lord.

She still hoped to get a glimpse in his eyes, something giving her some clues, telling her that there was still room in him for all too human perceptions, that the blood boiled just like hers.

But she knew it was an illusion, and that the presence of Voldemort beside her, on her, was precarious, evanescent, untouchable. Everytime she tried to take a step further, he disappeared.

Voldemort was not a man. Voldemort was a shadow.

 _Her_ shadow.

It projected on her body, at the light of a few candles, rendering blurry the outlines of those moments of pure passion. And he annulled her, as if in front of him Bellatrix was just dust, just instinct.

She knew he could’ve put an end to that feral and atrocious idyll at any times; but he kept her tight, appreciating her as a right hand and despising her as a woman.

 _Body and power_. That’s what Bellatrix Lestrange had to offer.

She couldn’t resist the temptation of being definitively and indissolubly his. She tied herself to her dreams, each passing night looking more like nightmares. She saw herself slave and then queen, petal and then rose, lover and then wife. A cursed wife, spouse of the darkness, but a wife having all she could possibly desire; her lips would’ve finally had a taste different than the one of excitement.

But those were just pictures, product of a laboured mind, undeniably raped by a man, which was not human.

Lost in dreams. For men and women seek refuge in dreams, certain that they could find pieces of reality there.

But her reality was too bitter to find a place in her sleep.

And, all of a sudden, she stopped dreaming, caged in a dead end, with no way to escape.

 

_ Nothing spawns from diamonds _

Having everything was the thing anyone would’ve desired. Having everything but freedom, possession of herself, was the thing Narcissa abhorred most of all.

She was born in a family that had deluded her. Everybody watched her, told her she was beautiful, that she existed to reach perfection, to hold high the name of the Black.

Lies. They didn’t think it, and it wasn’t true. She was born to be a little Bellatrix, to know cruelty too soon and to learn to appreciate it. And she did. She had enjoyed other people’s tragedies, she had known the charming game of torture, and she had follow the path that others had accurately drawn for her.  

But every night, Narcissa had to pay the price for the choices she couldn’t take, for rebellions seemingly lightyears far from her and from all she’d always been taught.

It was that guilt that during the years finished its work, slowly turning off what was left of Narcissa Black’s vitality. Luxury and splendour were everyday life, and she shone in the middle of all those objects that she foolishly deemed necessary. _Toujour pur,_ of course, but also _Tojour tout,_ and it jumped out at everyone who set foot inside their house. Full of stupid furnishings on the outside and barren inside, that’s how she had felt the moment she looked in the mirror, and saw a child become a woman all too soon, a child who’d been denied every toy, changing them with the sad reality of what her fate was.

Wife, mother, advocate of the continuation of the pure blood, which had been the foundation of the Black family for the past centuries.

And she had always done what she was asked, she had loved because she was forced, she had learnt the sly art of silence and submission, winning over those thoughts that brought her back in time, to empty days that oddly presented a vein of joy.

Joy for an innocence that in her was long gone.

Narcissa was all but silly or shallow, but something inside of her pushed her to pretend she was, in order to keep control over the few things she had left.

Her dreams.

Those captivating her at night in the darkness, lying beside a man that had been a stranger, those dreams stained with a sort of infantility, heritage of a stolen childhood.

Those were the only moments where she felt real, where she could actually believe her path could really stray, that she could be author to her own story. And the awakening, cursed, always brought her back, her feet on the ground, looking at a world that seemed more and more unescapable, where she had chains that weren’t going to be broken.

She would’ve just wanted for someone to see the pain hidden behind those eyes, their colour by now faded.

But she had no hope at all. Every morning Lucius smiled to her, happy to have a good wife next to him, not to have Narcissa Black per se. So in time she had done all she could to strip her character down, to become just a woman, nothing more.

Slowly she had undressed of all those qualities she had had when she was a kid, until there was just the bare flesh left of her, just the shell of a million thoughts that no human mind was ever going to see.

Narcissa looked rapt outside the window, and she could only see the solitary drops of rain staining the glass, tedious and destined to disappear all too soon. Then she watched the ring weighing on her finger like a boulder.

Lucius had asked to marry him in May, when the diamond mounted on the pure gold reflected the sun everywhere, making her world appear even more magical than it already was. It hadn’t been a felt proposal, but all that light had given Narcissa feelings she couldn’t deny herself.

Now, in the greyness of her present, that diamond had melted with the shadows around her and had lost any light, as her vanished youth.

She closed her eyes slowly, rocking herself in the ticking of the rain, rocking herself in the only light she could find in the moments of darkness. The light inside her mind, that coming from ancient desires, from dreams that were always the same. Aware that men are used to seek refuge in dreams, and that those were the last thing allowing her to feel human.

 

_ A Canseira, O Brio _

(The Weariness, the Dignity)

 

A kid can’t always be aware of his choices.

That was the conclusion Regulus had sadly come to. He had realized that when it was too late, when his skin was marked of pure evil, when is life seemed to be devoted to a much more atrocious cause than his family’s.

But he had understood that, and it was enough to feel way better than those surrounding him.

Strong with that awareness, he spent his days watching the others.

He saw hollow eyes, scars destined to never disappear, indelible sign of inexistent faults.

Regulus was different. He knew who he was dealing with, he knew what was happening was just the tip of an iceberg made of blood, tortures, ferocious repression.

What he didn’t know then was the right path to take.

Times again during the endless and tormented nights spent at Grimmauld Place, he dreamt of escaping, far away, where nobody knew who he was, where nobody would’ve noticed that weird tattoo on his left arm.

But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t, because he was already betraying in his mind the expectations his parents had for him, and he couldn’t allow himself to be stained by the sin of cowardice.

_Either you’re with me, or you’re against._

That had always been Voldemort’s policy, and he had come to terms with it.

Just, he had been wrong choosing sides. He had been hypnotized by those dark eyes, that alluring and hissing voice, which would’ve convinced him of anything.

He had played with fire, and he had gotten irreparably burnt. He felt he didn’t have any blood left in his veins, that he wasn’t alive anymore. That he was eighteen and already old.

He had all to arm’s reach, but he couldn’t take anything. That’s how he felt. _Caged._ And with no reasons left to keep playing that farce, playing his role in that little horror comedy.

He knew what the next scene was supposed to be. It was the stage fright which made him spend sleepless nights, sweating and shivering as who realizes that the word ‘end’ is horribly close.

He was tired of all he was forced to see and do. And convinced he was the only one who could do something, the only one who would’ve dared a rebellion marked with the name of death.

Regulus had understood too many things about Voldemort, and his final act would’ve been making him regret to have kept him close.

 

~

 

His last moments mirrored perfectly what his existence had been for the past few months.

Dark. Cold. Suffocating.

He drowned inexorably into the hands of Death, into the hands of dead people. The slimy Inferi were bringing him away from himself, dragging him deeper, to the point of no return.

He remembered all of a sudden when he was a child, and talking with Sirius he had told him that the only worthy death for a Black was a glorious one, as a hero. His brother had laughed about him, as usual sceptical when it was about the great ideals of the Blacks.

In that moment, Regulus felt he had to admit Sirius was right. And after all, he was sure none of his relatives would’ve agreed on his final idea of a hero.

A hero on the side of what was right, a hero sacrificing himself, spilling perfectly pure blood for reasons that all of the Blacks would’ve deemed despicable.

But what matter right then was that the putrid water was slowly washing away those stains which had become a part of his soul, they were fading, making him whole again.

A hero. That was all he wanted to be. A silent hero, unknown, inglorious. But this was his last desire, the last dream he abandoned himself to before closing his eyes forever.

Men seek refuge in dreams. Regulus, in a dream, was dying.

 

_ The Poison of These Words _

She slammed the door of her room, went into a corner and put her hands over her ears.

She didn’t want to hear a sound. Nothing reminding her who she actually was, none of her parents’ and sisters’ words.

Those words sharp like blades, piercing like the freezing cold of December.

Black their soul like their name, and she didn’t want anything to do with it.

She could still hear their voices in her mind, and she believed to have gotten crazy. And after all, it would’ve been well foreseeable. She could imagine her mother’s reaction, had she actually become insane.

_“After all, little Dromeda has never been too normal.”_

No, she wasn’t normal. Nor she had any hope to become so, if it meant becoming like them.

She sighed, without feeling the need to cry. Too many useless tears had been already spilled in their name, and she had started skimping on them for a future that didn’t look too rosy.

She knew she couldn’t base her life on the choices she couldn’t make, on the stands she couldn’t take. She hated them all, but at the same time she couldn’t deprive herself of their presence, that still stung her, stung her too much, for in them she saw all she wasn’t going to be. Living a still life, without any grief nor distress. She could’ve accepted its boredom, if it had deprived her of her anguish. Of all those unusual passions, of all the thoughts wandering to the irrational. Of all that looking for love in any face, in the most unlikely ones, where she knew there wasn’t going to be.

All in her taste of resignation; she lived a suffering she had created on her own, for there was no one else around. Just names and faces, and problems and thoughts, that never came even close to scratch the surface of her soul.

But she was a stranger to all of them, and she knew she shouldn’t have expected a thing. Not a gesture to border on affection, no words of comfort. All that was owed to her was poison, venomous caresses, hoping with that venom to infect her with the seed of Black.

No one had foreseen that Andromeda could be stronger than any of their weapons, more stubborn of the deviant mind of a mother who despises her daughter. But she was too tired to react, even though she realized tiredness had reached her too soon.

And after all, what did she need youth for, that entity so ephemeral, if she didn’t even have a chance to live it? She would’ve had nothing to tell, just other people’s lives, which weren’t going to ever belong to her. She convinced herself that existence is truly made in moments. But too many of those had gone by and nothing had changed; so she stopped being present, and started hoping in the future, before realizing that future came with every passing second, and all became that now that she hated so much.

Right then she saw her last chance. Dream.

Dream with her eyes open, evading a reality too bitter, moving her mind in a place where she could be the main character, not just a marginal being. Dreaming at times gave her a few smiles among tears, dreaming that all she had desired could be finally be at arm’s reach, that it could finally become a touchable reality. A reality where there was no pain, no blood, no superfluity, where everything would’ve been based on each human being in his wholeness, on what he had inside, not on what he appeared to be.

A world where she could’ve spoken her mind, where those half-truths wouldn’t have existed anymore. Her personal island of Utopia, which madmen and visionaries kept looking for where it couldn’t exist. An island where humans would’ve been ‘human’ for the very first time.

Andromeda Black spent the last years of her adolescence living apart from people, feeling important for she had a place to run to, a place far happier than any existing one.

A place called dream, something everybody had, but that few could forge like they really wanted to.

All men sook refuge in dreams, but Andromeda was sure that none of them could have an imagination so vivid as to reach her Island.

And she thought it until she met Ted. And the citizens of her dreams became two. Then, everything just became reality.


End file.
